ALERT - Vitamin A is probably simple antidote to bird flu, mainstream literature shows

New AIDS Review ^ | 11/20/2005 | New AIDS Review

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ALERT - Vitamin A is probably simple antidote to bird flu, mainstream literature shows

Hold those billions, Vitamin A blocks bird flu lung devastation
New AIDS Review - 11/20/2005

All the panic over H5N1 seems a little overblown when you consider that the virus has been around for eight years at least without morphing into a deadly human version that can sweep the globe from human to human. The very same H5N1 was the cause of the "Avian flu" outbreak in Hong Kong in 1997.

But just to reduce the hysteria a few more notches, we have decided to relent on our decision ... to be kind to the drug companies, officious officials, army of doomsayers and worrywarts, posturing politicians, and all the other people whose interests mesh smoothly with maximum flu alarm, and announce with a trumpet fanfare the final solution to bird flu.

We at New AIDS Review thus proudly note today (Sun Nov 20, 2005), apparently for the first time in any form of media outside the medical literature, the references that tell what the ultimate solution to bird flu surely is: a modest dose of Vitamin A to anyone who contracts it.

You read right. The $7.2 billion question is this: why spend billions upon billions on massive and uncertain preventive measures such as

a) executing the few chickens owned by poor Asian families who may depend on them for survival

b) the unlikely effort to prevent H5N1 spreading among domestic fowl by vaccinating 5.1 billion birds in China and billions elsewhere in Asia (the Chinese eat 14 billion chickens a year, so even if a gigantic army of vaccinators is successfully recruited and swings into action, they will have to keep at it forever, as if they were repainting a hundred Golden Gate bridges annually),

c) stockpiling enough vaccine for humans which if it can be done will take months and may be evaded anyway by the evolving virus, and

d) distributing enough antivirals like Tamiflu to sink a ship when there is some question as to whether they will be effective against this virus (according to the British Medical Journal current issue 2005;331;1266 'How the Media Caught Tamiflu')

when, according to the mainstream medical literature lying under the noses of the pontificating pundits and overly political scientists such as Anthony Fauci and the CDC brass who are on every TV channel this morning chinking their medals and repeating what the media have been hearing for months, the simple solution to H5N1 is this: give anyone who contracts deadly bird flu a dose of Vitamin A.

This will do the trick because Vitamin A reliably blocks the pathway of creation of deadly Tumor Necrosis factor in the lungs, which is the aspect of bird flu which is so deadly.

That is what the referenced papers say which we list below, which are readily available to any of these heroes of health for their bedtime reading.

Government without time to read

Why this grand army of well paid advisors, experts, commentators, WHO statisticians, field workers, corporate chieftains, Presidential advisors, think tank wonks, fast-talking current affairs hosts, and other luminaries have somehow overlooked them in their rush to judgement we hesitate to imagine.

Could it be that, in this age of information deluge, opinion making of every kind in the hottest issues of the day has now become completely divorced from factual information if that data is buried in any form of publication other than newspaper headlines and book reviews?

If so, it bodes ill for the future. Certainly there are already two huge signs that this is now true: Katrina and Iraq. In both cases, extensive written advisories were completely ignored.

As we all know, there were plenty of warnings in the form of levee engineering reports that a strong hurricane would flood New Orleans out of existence, written years before Katrina struck. So many, in fact, that even the leisurely PBS had time to send a documentary crew down there to make the same point some years ago.

In the case of Iraq, a report of thousands of pages of what to do with the country once the war was won was prepared by the State Department, in consultation with all kinds of experts and exiled Iraqis, for the Bush administration in advance of the invasion.

According to the New Yorker, it was filed in the White House waste basket.

The Avian flu-TNF-Vitamin A paper trail

[ Below ] are the references on Vitamin A and what they say, courtesy of library research by Robert Houston, long time medical investigator and nutrition researcher in New York City, who has lectured at the New School and frequently advises reporters on health and medical topics. He writes:

Can Vitamin A Tame Bird Flu?

NewAIDSreview.org scoops the world's media by being the first to reveal that recent scientific studies point to vitamin A as a potential remedy for bird flu.

It should be noted however that the normal requirement of vitamin A is only 5000 units per day (1.5 mg), and that the therapeutic levels range from 25,000 to 100,000 units (about 7 - 28 mg).

Unlike vitamin C, it cannot be taken in gram amounts; in fact, severe toxicity has occurred at 300 mg (1 million units). Other nutrients, such as the omega-3 fatty acids of fish oil, can also help to reduce TNF overproduction.
(see Grimble, R. et al. The ability of fish oil to suppress tumor necrosis factor-a production... Am J Clin Nutr 76:454-9, 2002.)

At these [ therapeutic ] amounts it should be possible to defend every person on earth from avian flu for a fraction of the cost of Tamiflu. There is already a system in place for distributing Vitamin A to children in seventy countries.

Here is the paper trail that Houston followed that shows fairly conclusively that a little Vitamin A will tame Avian Flu:

How we know that Vitamin A tames Avian Flu:

1. A report in 1996 stated that vitamin A counteracts TNF in the joints in the case of arthritis caused by Lyme disease, a finding which has been ignored by the Lyme disease establishment.
   
   (Cantorna, M. and Hayes, E. Vitamin A deficiency exacerbates murine Lyme arthritis. J Infec Dis 174:747-51, 1996.)
    
2. Then it was shown in 2000 that vitamin A deficiency can result in injury to the lungs.
   
   (Baybutt, R. et al. Vitamin A defiency injures lung and liver parenchyma and impairs function of rat type II pneumocytes. J Nutr 130(5):1159-65, 2000.)
    
3. Then two studies found that vitamin A protects the lungs from damaging effects of TNF.
   
   (Besnard, V. et al. Protective role of retinoic acid from antiproliferative action of TNF-a on lung epithelial cells. Am J Physiol Lung Cell Mol Physiol 2822: L863-L871, 2002. First pub Dec 7 2001)
   
   (Am J Physiol Lung Cel Mol Physiol 282: L863-71, 2002; Torii, A. et al. Vitamin A reduces lung granulomatous inflammation... Eur J Pharmacol 497 335-342, 2004.)
    
4. The fact that H5N1 flu targets the lungs and that TNF collects there was established in July also. The paper showed that avian flu occurs primarily in the lungs.
   
   Bangkok investigators wrote that "We investigated a patient with fatal H5N1 influenza. Viral RNA was detected by PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) in lung, intestine, and spleen tiossue, but positive stranded viral RNA indicating viral replication was confined to the lung and intestine. Tumor necrosis factor was seen in lung tissue...In contrast to disseminated infection documented in other mammals and birds, H5N1 viral replication in humans may be restriucted to the lung and intestine, an the major site of H5N1 viral replication in the lung is the pneumoctye.
   
   (Influenza A replication sites in human sites in humans. Uiprasertkul M, etc al. Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand. Emerg Infect Dis 2005 Jul 11 (7):1036-41.)
    
5. A study from the National Health Research Institute in Taipei at the same time reported that vitamin A (retinoic acid) suppresses TNF production and does so by blocking the same signalling pathway (p38 kinase) which bird flu activates.
   
   (Ho, L. et al. Retinoic acid blocks pro-inflammatory cytokine-induced matrix metalloproteinase production... Biochemical Pharmacology 70:200-208, July 15, 2005.)
    
6. The key breakthrough was published two months ago in August, confirming why the avian flu virus H5N1 is more deadly than other flu viruses. Scientists at the University of Hong Kong studied the H5N1 flu which broke out in Hoing King in 1997 and found that it hyperinduces tumor necrosis factor (TNF) in the body's immune cells, causing severe autoimmune damage in the lungs where the virus localizes.
   
   They say they hope that "these results may provide insights into the pathogensis of H5N1 disease and rationales for the development of novel therapeutic strategies."
   
   (Lee, D.C. et al. Hyperinduction of tumor necrosis factor alpha expression in response to avian influenza virus H5N1. J Virol 79(16):10147-54, Aug. 2005. The University of Hong Kong, Queen Mary Hospital,Pokfulam, Hong Kong Special Administratiuve Region, People's Republic of China.)

As the last paper suggests, this knowledge about the modus operandi of Avian Flu can be used for the "development of novel therapeutic strategies".

Our "novel strategy" is to ramp up Vitamin A production to stratospheric levels and make sure there is enough for every man, woman and child on the planet. Since that would cost less than a few cents each, we reckon, it would save all of $10 billion right there in WHO salaries, Tamiflu patent royalties, Anthony Fauci television appearances, and all the other costs that modern health defenses are now saddled with.

But why haven't Anthony Fauci and his cohorts at the NIH and CDC, not to mention the WHO, come up with this themselves? Why do they need an obscure onlooker to point it out to them?

It's their job, after all, to protect us from this gigantic threat which they are saying may ruin the world. The ever authoritative Dr Fauci was saying on TV last night that, even if the virus never appears in lethal form, a vast effort to defend against it will be well worth the billions we can shovel at it. Shouldn't Dr Fauci read the medical literature in between his many sessions under the TV lights repeating the same smug alarms?

One possibility as to why the medical authorities don't know all this from reading their own literature, at bedtime if necessary, emerges from this sequence. It does help to be a nutrition expert who has researched Lyme disease, which is a relatively neglected and somewhat disputed area.

But then, so is nutrition a relatively neglected area, medically speaking, it seems to us. As a cause and cure of ailments, it is surely much more relevant than is suspected by many doctors in our commercial, drug-oriented system.

But of course, the unpatentable Vitamin A is no path to profits for the maker of Tamiflu, Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, a leader in an industry where profits are not as easy to come by these days.

Having the right drug in hand for a superbug can rescue the situation very rapidly for a drug company in hard times, as the case of Viropharma shows. Crucial Antibiotic Rescues Biotech Maker's Finances

On the other hand, as the case of Viropharma also shows, meddling with Mother Nature by dosing her with an ever increasing array of drugs can lead to unintended side effects which make it ever more important to consider the more natural alternative of nutrient supplements. Apparently in this case it is drugs that beget the need for yet another drug:

C. difficile disease occurs when antibiotics used to treat a different infection wipe out the beneficial bacteria that normally reside in the colon. That leaves an opening for C. difficile, which is resistant to most antibiotics. The bacteria form spores that can persist for months on surfaces like toilets and can be transferred to patients from the hands of health care workers or visitors.

Is it too much to ask that Dr Fauci and his battalions of scientists and health workers take up our suggestion and research the saner route of a safe nutritional alternative in dealing with what they present as the global health threat of all time?

And while they are at it, perhaps they might apply the same revisionist thinking to AIDS, which according to the mainstream scientific literature they are also ignoring is the highest mountain of theoretical scientific and medical garbage that has ever accumulated.

Additional follow up material by Robert Houston:

Some may object that even if vitamin A counteracts TNF, the dosage required may be higher than the safe physiological range. It is thus pertinent to quote from the recent study by J. Ho et al. (Biochem Pharm 70:200, 2005 - item 5 in the "paper trail"), which involved human cells:

Pro-inflammatory cytokines like interleukin-1 and tumor necrosis factor alpha play pivotal roles in immunopathogenesis... In this study we examined the possible effects and mechanisms of vitamin A... The results indicated that physiological concentrations of vitamin A appeared to be enough to provide certain protection from the immunopathogenesis... (emphasis added)

The above findings by L.J. Ho et al. of the National Health Research Institute in Taiwan indicate that moderate therapeutic levels of vitamin A can curb TNF wherever it may occur in the body. Earlier this month a world authority on vitamin A, Alfred Sommer, M.D., former Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, told the Washington Post:

In all the studies that have been done, and there are many, the net benefit of taking a large dose of vitamin A supplement two or three times a year has been overwhelmingly positive. One can get an overdose of vitamin A, but that would only occur if one took very large doses for very long periods of time... We knew that children were vitamin A deficient in many parts of the world... even very mild vitamin A deficiency, before children even develop night blindness, increased their risk of severe and deadly infectious diseases. (Washingtonpost.com, Nov. 4, 2005)

The world owes a debt of gratitude to New AIDS Review for bringing the important new findings on vitamin A and bird flu to public attention. The point is not that vitamin A is a cure but rather that it may be a lifesaver, which can neutralize the lethal aspect of bird flu. This is not my "original research" but rather the careful work of world-class scientists in China and elsewhere, which I merely collected in a literature search through Medline - something Fauci et al. should try sometime.

Corroborative Studies

A recent review of vitamin A from the Harvard School of Public Health (1) provides additional studies concerning its effect on tumor necrosis factor (TNF). Because the Hong Kong researchers specified the hyperinduction of TNF in macrophage cells of the immune system as the main pernicious effect of avian flu virus (D.C. Lee et al., J Virol, Aug. 2005 - item 6 in "paper trail"), it's pertinent that several studies have found that vitamin A blocks TNF in macrophages (2-4). As early as 1994 it was found that vitamin A (retinoic acid) "almost completely inhibited the production of TNF by macrophages," according to scientists at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas (4).

The Harvard review also referenced a small clinical trial. Conducted at the University of Oslo in 2000, it found that "Vitamin A supplementation in patients with low vitamin A levels resulted in...decreased tumor necrosis factor-a levels" (5). The dosage was only 6500 IU per day, just slightly above the daily requirement and about 1/15th the therapeutic dosage, yet the TNF levels of the patients fell in half.

Significant inhibition of TNF was also found in clinical trials of vitamin A (and other antioxidant vitamins) conducted in Italy [6] and Greece [7].

1. Villamor, E. and Fawzi, W. Effects of vitamin A supplementation on immune responses... Clin Microbiology Revs 18:446-464, July 2005.
2. Mathew, J. and Sharma, R. Effect of all-trans-retinoic acid on cytokine production in a murine macrophage cell line. Int J Immunopharmacology 22:693-706, 2000.
3. Motomura, K. et al. Destabilization of TNF-a mRNA by retinoic acid in hepatic macrophages. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 281:E420-E429, 2001.
4. Mehta, K. et al. Inhibition by all-trans-retinoic acid of tumor necrosis factor and nitric oxide production by peritoneal macrophages. J Leukocyte Biol 55:336-342, 1994.
5. Aukrust, P. et al. Decreased vitamin A levels in common variable immunodeficiency: vitamin A supplementation in vivo enhances immunoglobulin production and downregulates inflammatory responses. Eur J Clin Invest 30:252-259, 2000.
6. G. Mantovani et al. Reactive oxygen species, antioxidant mechanisms and serum cytokine levels in cancer patients: impact of an antioxidant treatment. J. Cell. Mol. Med. 6:507-82, 2002.
7. T. Vassilakopoulos et al. Antioxidants attenuate the plasma cytokine response to exercise in humans. J. Appl. Physiol. 94:1025-32, 2003.

Additional follow up material by New AIDS Review:

here are a few more [ citations ] to clinch the matter:

1. Destabilization of TNC-alpha mRNA by retinoic acid in hepatic macrophages:implic ations for alcoholic liver disease. by Kenta Motomura et al. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 2871: E420-E429, September 2001; 0193-1849/01 Vol 281, Issue 3.

Retinoic acid is a vitamin A derivative, C20H28O2, and blocks TNF in macrophages, as noted in this paper by University of Southern California School of Medicine researchers. Their study set out to find out the mechanism behind the established fact that Vitamin A depletion results in TNF increase in the blood and vice versa - Vitamin A banishes TNF.
The point relevant to bird flu is that in the liver disease that alcholics suffer from, Vitamin A derivatives are depleted and TNF results. Clearly Vitamin A is needed to inhibit TNF expression.

2. Vitamin A is a useful substance in protecting very young children as a review paper in Clinical Microbiology Reviews of July 2005 (p 446-464) from two Harvard researchers indicates. Eduardo Villamor and Wafaie Fawzi of the Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology wrote up "The effects of Vitamin A Supplementation on Immune Responses and Correlation with Clinical Outcomes" with 162 references, finding that Vitamin A was a a good booster to use on very young pre-immune response children (six months or younger) in many circumstances, including accompanying vaccines such as tetanus, diphtheria (probably), measles vaccine at six months, and maybe in improving immune response to other vaccines (not yet studied). They concluded Vitamin A should be given to children of less than six months to help their survival of measles, severe diarrhea, HIV (! - we assume this is because it would help maintain the gut in cases of severe diarrhea and prevent nutrient losses), and possibly malaria and intestinal diseases, as well as head off nutritional blindness.
All this speaks to the value of the current world wide campaign to distribute Vitamin A to small children in approaching a hundred countries.
The authors find studies of the effects of Vitamin A supplements on adults and the elderly are lacking and should be carried out. But it seems pretty clear that Vitamin A is a vital ingredient of the immune response, as well as in the maintenance of epithelia, the membranes covering the body and its organs.
The key mention of TNF is as follows, in the section on Monocytes/macrophages: "All-trans-retinoic acid was shown to decrease secretion of TNF-alpha in murine peripheral blood mononuclear cells and myelomonocytic and macrophage cell lines."

3. "Decreased vitamin A levels in common variable immunodeficiency: vitamin A supplementation in vivo enhances immunoglobulin production and downregulates inflammatory responses" by P. Aukrust et al, University of Oslo and University of Bergen, Norway. European Journal of Clinical Investigation (2000) 30, 252-259.

"Vitamin A supplementation in patients with low vitamin A levels resulted in interleukin-10(IL-10)and decreased tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNFalpha) levels, as found in both plasma and monocyte supernatants."

and maybe a little Vitamin C wouldn't hurt either:

4. "Ascorbic Acid Blocks the Growth Inhibitory Effect of Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha on Endothelial Cells" by Rubina W. Saeed et al, Lab of Vascular Biology, Division of Medicinal Biochemistry, North Shore-Long Island Jewish Research Institute, Manhasset, NY. Exp Biol Med 228:855-865, 2003.

This is a study relating to atherosclerosis where studies have shown recently that high plasma tumor necrosis factor (THF-alpha) levels and low serum ascorbic acid (AA) levels correlate with artherosclerosis severity. "AA significantly blocks the effects of TNF-alpha on Endothelial Cell proliferation and apoposis, namely by inhibiting TNF-alpha-induced p53 expression and...."

The fact that TNF is responsible for the deadliness of H5N1 flu has been known since the previous outbreak in 1997. Now there is an update from Hong Kong confirming the mechanism:

5. The ability of bird flu virus H5N1 to hyperinduce proinfammatory cytokines, including tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) in primary human macropages in vitro has been known since University of Hong Kong researchers showed this in the flu outbreak of 1997.
Recently they delineated the mechanism involved (the p38 MAPK signaling pathway) in "p38 Mitogen-activated Protein Kinase-dependent Hyperinduction of Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha Expression in Response to Avian Influenza Virus H5N1" by D. C. W. Lee et al in Journal of Virology 2005;79(16):10147-10154.

[ Additional citations added to New AIDS Review here, and here.  Slight editing done to include all relevant information and citations within one article and within logical context of the original article, and for minor clarification points that would not change the article content itself]

[CellPhoneSurfer]

This thread should be interesting...

[Red Badger]

Kentucky Fried Chicken is the Antidote for Bird Flu!.......

[CellPhoneSurfer]

I also posted another article about bird flu which readers might be interested in, Bird Flu Breakdown

[Vaquero]

The best ting for dat.....carrots....

[Brilliant]

Vitamin C prevents the common cold.

[kinoxi]

These people have been dying from a contagious vitamin deficiency?

[aimhigh]

As usual, I expect the FDA to say those magic words, ".. but more research is needed", while pushing a more profitable drug.

[sittnick]

And don't forget the picture of the types who work for the "New AIDS Review"

[CellPhoneSurfer]

I gues you didn't bother reading the article? If you had you would have understood that the Bird Flu virus is deadly due to the effects on the lungs, which Vitamin A at slightly elevated doses prevents from happening.

[CellPhoneSurfer]

I guess you didn't bother reading the article? If you had you would have understood that the Bird Flu virus is deadly due to the effects on the lungs, which Vitamin A at slightly elevated doses prevents from happening.

[CellPhoneSurfer]

Saw that you had pinged some people about the bird flu situation, and thought this might interest you.

[kinoxi]

modest doses of vitamin A...
A multivitamin gives 'modest' doses. I have a hard time believing that a few cups of carrot juice will eliminate a substantial amount of influenza deaths.
i read the article.

[Pharmboy]

It is a HUGE leap from this type of information (eg., the effects of vitamin A on TNF) from actually having a CLINICAL effect on avian flu. Often, logical thinking in science fails when tested.

[CellPhoneSurfer]

I don't disagree, but this should definitely be studied to determine if it is potentialy useful for Bird Flu cases. That Vitamin A does help prevent the very thing (TNF) that causes the Bird Flu to be so deadly definetly needs some attention.

[diamond6]

bump

[ahayes]

Big assumptions. I agree with Pharmboy. TNF-a is a major drug target for various reasons, and retinoic acid has some benefits but it isn't a magic bullet. Go ahead and take it if you like, but don't pass up on the Tamiflu if they're passing out pills.

[Pharmboy]

We are reading from the same page in the hymnal. Unfortunately, the pharma companies won't pay for the studies (since vit A is a commodity product), but the NIH should cough up a few bucks (no pun intended).

[Smokin' Joe]

Ping for discussion....

[Old Professer]

You're missing the point, according to the article, Vitamin A acts as a block to the body's receptors to the virus and thus the virus doesn't compromise the immune system.

[steve86]

I'll pass.